Chinese Characters for Eating Is Heaven

A couple of days ago I asked my Facebook and Twitter friends to tell me about interesting, unusual or weird food jobs. Right away I received two responses. This isn’t a lot admittedly, but I was happy to have heard from both of them. I told you about Rick Barger and his truffle tasting dog. Here’s the other from Valerie Saint-Rossy.

The conversation began: “Regina Schrambling urged me to tell you about a food class I teach.” Little could I guess that Valerie’s food job would be so wonderfully unusual. Ahh, it is so! Valerie’s class description and fuller background is below.

Chinese Characters for Chinese Food Lovers: Introduction to Reading Characters & Ordering From the Chinese Menu

Do you ever wish you could order the same dishes that the Chinese do in a Chinese restaurant, or be able to read the Chinese-only menu? Enhance your experience of Chinese food and learn about Chinese foodways with this introduction to the study of Chinese characters through food vocabulary.

In no other culture is this truer: to learn how to read is to learn how to eat. Why? Because food names in Chinese say so much more. Aspects of Chinese culture enter into even the most common names, so you cannot help but learn about its history, culture, art, and even its economics when you study Chinese food words.

The student learns how to copy and look up characters by analyzing and identify their parts, called radicals (similar to an alphabet). The student will learn approximately 50 characters that appear not only on menus, but also on signs, stores flyers, and packaging. By the end of the class the student will be able to recognize characters and names of dishes on menus. The student will also know how to look any new character using the Chinese character glossary, The Eater’s Guide to Chinese Characters by James D. McCawley.

I later asked Valerie how she developed this unique food job. What was her background? She explained that her food job passions began in infancy, that several streams intersected. She spent her childhood in Taiwan and India, where “exotic cooking was home cooking for her.

The second stream: since 2002, Valerie has been a freelance book editor, with specialization in cookbooks. It seemed only natural when she undertook a Chinese food project: making an index for the classic 3-volume Chinese cookbook called Pei-Mei’s Chinese Cook Book. (It doesn’t have one).

Over time Valerie’s original idea of teaching herself the Chinese characters for food words, characters, and the names of the dishes she loved grew more sophisticated. “I widened the scope of my food research. In 2004 a long out-of-print Chinese food glossary, (The Eater’s Guide to Chinese Characters), was republished. I realized that with the book I could teach other people what I had taught myself.”

The third strand: NYC is a Chinese food town, so Valerie approached NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies with the Chinese Characters for Chinese Food Lovers idea and they signed the class up. Moreover, friends and colleagues in NYC would call Valerie all the time: “whatever ingredient of type of restaurant you’re looking for, Valerie can tell you where to find it in New York.” (Valerie’s favorite eateries are all ethnic formica-table joints. She admits that her refrigerator is filled with the unidentifiable. Yet she is petite and weighs 108 lbs! Oh, if only i could say the same.)

To enroll in or find out more about Valerie’s private Chinese Characters for Chinese Food Lovers 12-week class, do contact her at vsaintrossy@gmail.com or 718-852-8485.

I love hearing from readers about their food jobs, though like many bloggers, I wish more people would share their experiences. Sometimes just a single idea will provide a spark that will help someone embark on a new path. I heard somebody say, “There is no such thing as a self-made person.” I agree.

Valerie’s lovely story reminds me again that we are interconnected and enriched when we share our food passions and food jobs. Every one of us is a sum of all the help we have received along the way.

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A
American Cuisine will continue to be ‘IN.’ Every one, (or at least some people) believes New American Cuisine is the future. (Though trying to define American Cuisine is as difficult as trying to pet a porcupine.)

There will be an App for appetite control. New diet drugs may kill you but what a swell corpse you will make.

Appetizers will morph into little meals.

Researchers at Emory University will make significant progress to finding a solution for the 11 million Americans suffering from allergies.

B
There no longer will be a clear definition between foods that are eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Instead, we will eat what we want to eat when we want to eat.

Single servings will continue to be the new darlings on supermarket shelves. Singles bars will morph into communal tables.

Boneless. Everything we eat will be boneless and pre-cut into bite-size pieces, so there will be no need for knives and forks on the table.

C
Chocolate business cards will be the new thing: they will be either white and sweet or dark and bitter.

Chic is a concept that is no longer fashionable. Cash, as in casual-ization, will be the new mantra.

Cakes decorated with real-life photographs of the honoree at the moment of triumph will become all too familiar.

Cookies: some wishful thinkers will believe that two little cookies don’t contain as many calories as one regular one.

D
Durian fruit will become the new kiwi now that scientists have removed the odious smell of unwashed socks from it.

Do It Yourself (DIY) will be the even more popular new mantra.

E
Eating Utensils. We will carry our own collapsible chopsticks in tiny perma-sterile compartments inside the latest version of an iPod.

F
French fries will become the new “health” food. They will be sizzled in “good-for-you” oils.

Every new food will be adaptable for serving in fast food outlets in a recognizable form, preferably shaped like a finger, though not necessarily a fish finger, as fish don’t actually have fingers. It must contain all four essential food groups, i.e., it must be greasy, salty, sweet and crunchy.

G
Goats, that will be got, will gallop onto many legislative agendas and restaurant menus.

H
Healthy Food Talk will continue to consume endless amounts of time and energy. Today most people are succumbing to degenerative diseases and the consequences of lifestyle choices. Death, despite the claims of some, is in fact not an option. Only plastic bags live forever.

I
I will be a guest speaker at cooking schools and colleges and the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) this year.

J
“Juicy” and “scandalous” stories will whet the appetite mainly because they allow us minor sinners to feel momentarily superior to our former idols.

K
Kimchee will be the new craze. It tastes so much better than kabbage.

L
‘Lovely’ will not be the word to describe the bacon martini craze.

M
Mood foods will maintain their popularity as consumers embrace emotional management strategies, including ‘purpose driven eating’.

N
“No!” will be the most popular dietary concept.

O
Onions that won’t make you cry will soon become available, brought to you by the biotechies.

P
The restaurant Per Se will continue to per-sonify the pur-suit of per-fection.

Q
Quote: “Anyone who thinks the way to a man’s heart is though his stomach, flunked geography.”

R
Robots will milk the cows, feed the chickens, plant the crops and gather the harvest. (Robots never need a break and require no benefits beyond an occasional kick-start and a squirt of motor oil.)

S
Sustainable cuisine is an idea that will continue to gather strength.

Sturgeon is now farm-raised along with spuds in Idaho. The new state license plate will be: Idaho, Land of Fish and Chips.

T
Twitter. The Top 10 tweeters were and will be:
Coca-Cola
Starbucks
Disney
Victoria’s Secret
iTunes
Vitaminwater
YouTube
Chick-Fil-A
Red Bull
T.G.I.Fridays

U
U won’t need echinacea to cure the common cold according to a published review in The American Journal of Medicine. (There was simply not enough evidence to say whether it actually worked.)

V
Valedictorian speaker Garrison Keillor is likely to say again, “Eat your veggies!” (It’s a good line.)

W
Wrapped. Everything will be wrapped. The objective is absolute food safety. The goal will be to produce all our produce in biodegradable materials, i.e., within a banana-like sterile peel.

White tablecloths will be disposed (of).

X
EXcellent reporting will continue to be found daily on Food News Journal.

Y
Yum! Brands, Inc. restaurants will expand to meet its customers’ eternal love in over 110 countries and territories for yummy pizza, tacos and fried chicken.

Z

Zealot definition: One who is zealous, especially excessively so. So (James Bond) let’s talk about my friend “M”.

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Beach Plum Fruit

The good news is: plums are now in season! The plum is such a luscious fruit that in the English language a secondary meaning of its name is “something superior or very desirable,” like plum jobs as well as sugar plums and plum pudding.

Our forefathers on Plymouth Rock turned up their noses at native American wild plums, including the beach plum that still grows in some profusion along the Atlantic coast. They had brought their own plum tree seeds from Europe where they had been cultivated for 2,000 years.

The prized plum, known in England as the Greengage, is in France called the reine-claude, named after the famously fat (and often pregnant) Queen Claude, who was very fond of this fruit.

However, the naming was not so much in her honor as she might have thought. It’s said that the reine-claude got its name because the plum’s stem to stern cleft shape reminded her courtiers of her royal backside.

Here’s the recipe for the plum compote I made yesterday.

Serves 4

2 pounds red or black plums, halved and pitted

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

Rind and juice of 1 orange

1/2 cup port wine

2 tablespoons red currant jelly

I teaspoon almond extract

Put all the ingredients in a saucepan. Cover and simmer over very low heat for 15 minutes.

Serve warm or chilled with (of course) whipped cream or ice cream.

That’s what I call a plum job!

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Executive Chef Alfred Portale, Gotham Bar & Grill

There are those who invent clocks and others who tell the time. There are architects who design buildings and folks who paint them. There are artisans who make violins and artists who composers of concertos.

We tend to think of artistic creativity as springing from the minds of dancers and painters and musicians, but plumbers, electricians and vacuum cleaner engineers also invent novel solutions to problems. They are creative geniuses too.

We all know chefs who acquire or are endowed with exceptional ability. Some are intellectual giants. Some are blessed with intuitive talent.

If we tried to make a list of influential chefs, it would reach from Lucullus who drew his last breath in 56 B.C. and trace a glorious gastronomic path through the prism of Apicius who took his first breath in 25 B.C. We’d mention Taillevent 1310 – 1395, and Rabelais who tirelessly described sixty ways to cook an egg.

In his treatise Gargantua, Rabelais wrote, “Drink always and you shall never die,” though unfortunately he did — in 1553.

We’d add to our list, Catherine de’ Medici, who arrived from Italy as a tiny betrothed 14 year-old and became the Queen of France. She changed the culinary landscape by introducing the French court to truffles, Parmesan cheese, artichokes, quenelles, roast duckling with orange sauce and pasta — lots and lots of pasta.

It has been observed there wouldn’t have been a Renaissance without pasta, because hungry men growl, and with rumbling tummies, foment revolutions whereas the well-fed sing happy songs and bequeath everlasting beauty. With a bellyful of spaghetti, a person can contemplate creation itself.

It was Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher who lived from 341 B.C. to 270 B.C. who wisely declared, “The beginning and root of all good is to make the stomach happy; wisdom and learning are founded on that.”

By Gum! If only those old Greeks still ruled the world we would all be living in Paradise instead of dwelling in perpetual poverty.

Do you remember the dictum of King Henri IV, patron of that venerable inn, La Tour d’Argent? He pronounced his monarchy philosophy thusly, “If God allows me to live, and I will see that there is not a single laborer in my kingdom who does not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.” And that pronouncement was made in the mid-1500s before the Colonel fried his very first KFC.

As we march through the menus of time we stumble across Colbert, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the Minister of Finance who served the Sun King, Louis, 14th. He approved France’s purchase of Quebec and Louisiana even though according to writer Daniel Rogov, author of Rogues, Writers & Whores, Dining with the Rich & Famous, “he could see no way to convince the savages that inhabit those lands to buy our fashionable frocks.” However, Colbert did see the colonies as a source for enriching the French larder, (though the future presence of McDonald’s in the Musée du Louvre was surely not what he had in mind).

Parmentier was the person who persuaded Parisians to set aside their fear of potatoes. This feat of conversion from fear of crisp spuds prompted Chef Curnonsky’s description of French fries as being among “the most spiritual creations of Parisian genius.” The original French fries are thought to have been first consumed beneath the bridges of Paris during the French Revolution and were known as Pommes Pont-Neuf.

Thus we stride through the first stirrings of culinary creationism and evolve from Sauce Béarnaise to Green Goddess Dressing, from Poulet Demi Deuil with a fine Bordeaux to Chicken Nuggets with Diet Coke. We have traveled far and with increasing width from Sachertorte to Twinkies.

Each stage in the devolution of our culinary journey takes us to new heights: from the 17th century’s influence of La Varenne, we stride through gastronomy to honor: Brillat-Savarin, Marcel Boulestin, Antonin Carême, Choron, Dugléré, Nicolas Appert, (who invented canning), to Auguste Escoffier; Alain Chapel; Alain Ducasse and Alain Senderens to  Ferdinand Point; Guy Savoy and Gordon Ramsay; Chef Boyardee and Rachael Ray’s discovery of 365 ways to use leftover hot dogs.

We can all agree that Alfred Portale, a former jewelry designer and top of his class graduate of the CIA, is among the most inventive and highly acclaimed chefs of our time. As too are Ferran Adria, Grant Achatz, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller and a host of others who have ascended into the exalted pantheon of kitchen deities.

What distinguishes these creamers of crops is their ability to think creatively: so not salt and predictable pepper but salt on caramel. Not those four seasons but twelve seasons in a year.

It is said: “No one is born with taste. Taste must be acquired not only by tasting but by learning and reading in dozens of disciplines and by experimenting and perfecting and making choices; choices about the right ingredients are of no greater or less importance than choosing the right words to describe your purpose.”

It is one thing to name an item on the menu fish eggs and astonishingly more profitable to whisper the word caviar. To say liver of a fat duck is less enticing than Fat Duck’s Foie (gras).  Or pâté rather than cold  meat loaf. Pommes frites go better with steak than Freedom Fries, a dish of revenge best served cold.

Robert F. Kennedy wrote, “Some dream of things that are and ask, Why? Others dream of things that never were and ask, Why not?” Nonconformists and risk takers possess the ability to paint toothache in fondant or describe the seductive smell of sizzling onions.

Creativity is a skill that can be developed. It is based on the fundamentals of technical knowledge and soaring imagination. Leonardo da Vinci had to understand the elements of anatomy in order to paint the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper; Picasso had to understand the fundamentals of art before creating his own cubistic artistry.

Every great chef starts to climb the ladder of stardom only after fully understanding the pure ecstasy of a well-constructed consommé. It is this grasp of complex simplicity that separates the sous from the celeb.

It takes a certain kind of intellect to think of serving a beefsteak tomato with a steak knife. To say “I love!” in a different way.

To invent a new dish is to pay homage to all who cooked before us and all the consumers who declared the chef to be an artist.

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Photo: Royalty-Free/Corbis

Becoming a restaurant critic is another super job you can consider if you love food and love restaurants. Just look at the explosion of online sites devoted to restaurant criticism today. Four million “experts” (and counting) seem to Yelping online while Zagat guides still flourish in print.

The restaurant criticism biz is changing rapidly. As Regina Schrambling wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Restaurant criticism can be divided into two eras: BG and AG. Before Google, reviewers could pretty much move freely about their business. Some might have felt compelled to slap on a wig, and those with integrity would definitely reserve and pay under an assumed name. By all standards of old-media journalism, restaurateurs were not supposed to know when a reviewer with the clout to make or break his investment was anywhere near the kitchen. After Google, the rules are being rewritten by the hour.”

There are many columnists who write restaurant reviews, but I personally think it is essential to have a solid culinary background in order to establish your credentials. Having at least an A.O.S. (Associate in Occupational Studies) degree from a professional cooking school  is a major credential. It puts you are in a much better position to have an educated opinion when you understand the  fundamental techniques of cooking and know how restaurants are operated. This doesn’t mean you have to make allowances when things go wrong, but  it can save you from making  embarrassing mistakes.

Some people have romantic ideas about looking for a job as a restaurant critic. They think it means free dining in fine restaurants and tossing off an opinion after taking a nap.  Sadly this is fantasy, not reality. Most of the top critics acknowledge they spend a minimum of 30 hours a week eating. The rest of the time is spent writing.

If you are starting out, it’s important to abide by the rules. This means remaining anonymous and unless you have an assignment from a publication or an online entity, you will have to pay for your own meals. Established publications reimburse you for your expenses, but many small publications do not, and they pay (usually a pittance) for the article.

Restaurant critics learn to live in an atmosphere where their presence – if detected – is met with groveling and cringing servitude, anxiety embedded with hostile loathing. But being liked is not part of the job. Honesty is.

Ruth Reichl, former restaurant critic of The New York Times and now editor-in-chief of Gourmet notes: “The critic’s responsibility is to the public. I don’t care about restaurants,” she said. “I care about readers.”

When critics do go out on a limb, though, the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right to express an opinion, and there is not much an aggrieved restaurant owner can do about it.

William “Biff” Grimes, former restaurant critic of The New York Times, revealed that by the time he left his position, after serving five years on the job, he calculated he had written 438 reviews and devoured 1,200 meals.

After dining at a monstrously expensive restaurant, Biff was relieved that: “the tab wasn’t coming out of my pocket. Taking pen in hand, I affixed my signature to a bill that totaled nearly $1,500 for four diners dinners, tip not included. In one Olympic motion, I had broken all previous records by several hundred dollars. I felt the kind of mad exhilaration that criminals must feel when they’ve done something terribly, irrevocably wrong.”

He added: “Learning to eat is a kind of education. It rewards the adventurous. It pays double dividends to thrill seekers, who dare to taste a sea urchin; who do not flinch in the face of an andouillette; who, instead of sniffing and picking and probing when something odd turns up on the plate, dive right in, sending off sparks with their forks. We have a name for such people. We call them adults. And when they go out to a restaurant, they are not looking for solace; they’re looking for a good meal.”

One can only hope that there was no connection when critic Grimes moved from the Times dining section to the book review section to a new appointment as one of the paper’s obituary reporters. In essence, he moved from writing about meals to die for to the ‘dead‘ beat!

Bill Rice, esteemed Chicago Tribune food and wine columnist and former chairman of the Restaurant Awards committee for the James Beard Foundation, rightly points out: “A restaurant critic is a consumer advocate. His role is to provide the reader with a second-hand experience before going for a first-hand one,” says Bill. “What the reader wants to know is if he can anticipate receiving a good meal at an appropriate cost. The more the meal costs, the higher will be the expectations of both the critic and the guest.”

He adds: “An essential fact is that critics should like — or, better still, love — the restaurant business and be knowledgeable about every aspect of it. Restaurant reputations are too important to be left to the impressions of the uninformed.”

How are well-thought-out restaurant reviews written? Take it from a master like Alan Richman. In Fork It Over: The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater, Alan chronicles his brilliant career as a wonderfully witty restaurant critic for GQ magazine, and lists five essential qualities a restaurant critic should have. “A good critic has to have taste,” says Alan, “That’s number one.” “Number two, experience, because it’s vital that you’ve tasted alot of food. With experience comes confidence. Something that is often missing in food critics today is passion. That’s three. Fourth, critics should have a sense of humor, because so much of dining out today is about entertainment. I hope nobody thinks it’s about sustenance, because when dining out, food is no longer about survival. Finally, we get into writing. Critics have to know how to write.”

These are very good tips!

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Grasshopper

Four years ago I met Doris Friedensohn at a conference that was jointly organized by The Culinary Institute of America and New York University. Several faculty members from both colleges presented papers ranging from intensely boring to soaring brilliance.  For me, Doris was the shining star of the entire shindig.

Doris is a specialist in American culture with an interest in food and foodways in the US and elsewhere. She is a woman of enormous grace, charm and scholarship who has a unique role in the food world and who is leading a life filled with doing exactly what she wants to do. She told me how she does it.

“Irena, I talk about eating bugs and other cultural matters; what I like to call the satisfaction of an unpaid food job.”

“In the U.S. we don’t eat bugs,” I say. “We spray them. We swat them. We stomp on them. And we spray ourselves to stay bug-free. We also don’t eat horses, as the French have done, or dogs, as the Koreans still do. Eating is cultural. That is, we eat what we have been taught to eat and what powerful food industries pressure us to eat.”

“In Mexico – - and especially in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca – - fried grasshoppers, chapulines in Spanish, are a favorite snack. For many Oaxacans, they are an addiction, like peanuts or Fritos.” Chapulines (pron: chap-u-leen-ace) are eaten after the rains begin and through early autumn.

Forty food service students are still with me, still paying attention. I couldn’t be certain they would. After all, I’m not a chef. I’m a writer. I’ve asked them, “who’s interested in the impact of this free, fourteen-week program on their lives.”

Ever since I began visiting the Food Service Training Academy (FSTA) at the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, more than five years ago, I’ve been worrying about the absence of cultural matters of the curriculum. Students are taught knife skills, weights and measurements, proper temperatures for cooking and chilling various foods, sanitary standards and a basic culinary vocabulary.

In the kitchen, they learn to fry, sauté, and grill; they make soup and pizza, vegetables, rice and potatoes; they bake cakes, cookies and fruit pies. They are asked to plan menus and act as sous chefs for a day. They are assigned a foreign cuisine and compete for prizes in an international food jamboree.

But at no point in their program are questions raised about the origins of their own foodways or the nature of eating in America. At no point are their own attachments to burgers, fries, grits, well done meat and rice pudding treated as anything but “normal.” Students know they can’t afford a diet of sirloin steak and lobster. But beyond the limitations of the pocketbook, neither they nor their teachers ask: why they eat as they do – - why do Americans generally eat as we do?

“Where’s the food in food services?” I remember asking the chefs at the end of an international food competition. How come no one mentions of cultures of rice and potatoes or cultures of butter and olive oil? How come students don’t wonder why hundreds of running feet of supermarket shelves are devoted to dried cereals that are almost indistinguishable from one another? How come no one asks why fresh vegetables in ghetto food shops look limp and packaged meats are often gray at the edges?

What could I do, I wondered? What could I contribute to the (liberal) education of food service students?  Selfishly, I wondered what I might do to enrich my connections with students – - and advance my own writing project. I imagined a series of “five-minute mini-lectures.” The abbreviated talks that I had in mind, illustrating the cultural contexts of eating or the politics and economics of foodways, would have to be carefully scripted – - for clarity, liveliness and pace. The talks would have to be entertaining: more like stories than lectures.

“After my opening comments on bugs, I describe how grasshoppers are netted in cornfields, killed in scalding water, deep fried in lard, and seasoned with garlic, chili pepper and lime juice.”

Woman Selling Chapulines Courtesy of http://mexkitchen.blogspot.com

“Chapulines, sold on the street by women wearing the traditional long skirts and blouses of their villages, are a deep bright red, salty, spicy and crunchy – - a little like crispy fried onions, with a bite. I confess to my audience that the first time I noticed the grasshoppers in Oaxaca, maybe 40 years ago, I couldn’t imagine putting a bug in my mouth – - not to mention a handful of bugs.”

“But, I’ve had a chance to rethink my squeamishness. What makes fried bugs so different from sautéed calves brains or stewed pigs’ feet or raw octopus — all delicacies that I love?”

“On a visit to Oaxaca in July 1995, I report, I sought out a local restaurant with chapulines on the menu. The owner served us beers, warm corn tortillas, guacamole – - and a platter of flimsy red objects that glowed in the afternoon light.  I grabbed a tortilla, covered it with a thick layer of guacamole and sprinkled a few chapulines on top. After folding the tortilla in half — with the bugs out of sight — I took my first cautious bite. The bland tortilla, the smooth guacamole and the spicy crunch of chapulines were like music in my mouth. Delicious! As good as a great BLT!”

“The story ends with a message. “Around the world,” I say, “millions of people regularly consume all kinds of bugs. Why? Because: they are local, easily trapped, cheap, simple to prepare, rich in protein, and tasty, too. Many Mexicans eat chapulines because their grandparents did and so do their neighbors. And because, they are passionately attached to the texture and flavors. Grasshoppers are a normal, seasonal and sustaining part of their diet.” ”

“Later, in the kitchen, several students ask me about other odd foods I’ve encountered, and whether I really liked them. I mention snake and wild boar; the snake rather dull, like chicken, and the boar unforgettably flavorful and rich. “I had snails,” one student says, “in a great garlic sauce.” “Everything depends on where you grow up,” another student says. “I wanna travel,” a third student comments, “and see how they eat in Asia.” “We can eat weird Asian foods right here in Newark,” a fourth student chimes in. “If we want to,” he adds.”

“I’ve given the chapulines talk – - and a half-dozen others – - to four classes now; and the chefs have integrated them into the FSTA program. They like the idea that I’m taking care of “culture” with my stories from Mexico, Tunisia, Nepal, Korea, Argentina, South Africa and the Obama election campaign.”

“With these presentations, I get closer to students whose lives are my subject and reason for being there. How fortunate I am to have stumbled upon this good, nonpaying food job!”

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Courtesy of Martin Family

Heard on WAMC/Northeast Public Radio: When the New Orleans streetcar drivers went on strike in 1929, the unemployed workers showed up at a restaurant’s back door. Greeted with the cry,“Here comes another po’ boy!”

they were given a hunk of crusty bread stuffed with “debris,” consisting of trimmings of roast beef and gravy, scraps of Creole sausage, fried oysters or shrimp from the Gulf.

The times are not changing — much.  As we plunge into another real or feared depression, we are fast becoming a mighty global heap of po’ folks.

Pendulums swing, but never go back entirely to the way we were. There’ll always be luxury in the midst of plenty.

When the legendary restaurateur Joe Baum opened The Four Seasons in 1959, it was one of the most expensive, culinary palaces in Manhattan. On the menu were:

Meadow Veal Cutlet with Morels, $5.75
Two Thrush en Brochette, $7.50
Beefsteak Tomato, Carved at the Table, $1.25 (and served with a steak knife)
Baby Pheasant in Golden Sauce, $6.25
Twin Tournedos with Woodland Mushrooms, $7.00
The Youngest Carrots in Butter, $1.25
Nasturtium Leaves .95 cents

The average price of a car was $2,200, gasoline was 30 cents a gallon, and the average annual income was $5,565, with minimum wage set at $1 an hour. Today, the fingerling potatoes cost as much as the roasted chicken.

You’d think we’d be drowning our sorrows in spirited drink. Not so. The restaurant consulting company Technomatic, reports that sales of grown up beverages have plummeted. Yikes! Could it be that we are skidding towards temperance?

Some have an even worse time than the rest of us. $2.52 a day is the total allowance to cover three meals a day in the Federal penitentiary. Today 2,258,983 prisoners are held in Federal or State prisons or in local jails.

So I have a way to deal with this problem. To save gas, let’s “free” the offenders (fitted with GPS-monitored anklets) so they can grow vegetables and plant fruit trees along our highways. All our food will be produced locally.

Estimates vary but some suggest there are close to 90,000 students currently enrolled in culinary schools nationally. I could find jobs for ALL of them. They can cook all the food farmed by felons in community kitchens.

More bad news: we’re going to have to give up those monster steaks and downscale from red meat to white. Instead let’s produce protein from stem cells.  Of course there’ll be resistance. So we’ll have to introduce the idea in animated cartoon form on Super Bowl Sunday. I suggest we name the new stuff Hypp—O (Have Your Pure Protein — Organically). The logo will be a frolicking hippo fashioned like the Metropolitan Museum of Art cutie.

Corn is a big issue in these hard times. We’ve made the eminently foolish decision to convert it into inefficient bio-fuel, thus creating a shortage. It looks as if we’re going to have to rethink this basic foodstuff. Scarcity will enhance its appeal, but if we used the methodology that gave us red, orange, yellow, purple and black peppers, we can surely color all the golden corn green. Green is what we’re into now. Big time.

Speaking of big, it is an indisputable fact that most of us can no longer afford to shop or go to fancy restaurants. We’ll have to stay at home and stare at all those flat screen TV’s we bought in the good old days.

But, this is good news!

We know when blackouts and other catastrophic world events kept the public off the streets, this resulted in a heap of begetting. This behavioral shift could point the way out of our current economic woes. Little babies are incredibly demanding. They need stuff: diapers, sun hats, crayons, piano lessons, little league uniforms, schools, toys, cell phones and tons of other things. There’s nothing like a new baby to get consumers dashing into the stores and spending without ceasing.

As you see, we just need to look at the future with a telescope instead of a microscope.

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Traditional Christmas Pudding

Hear Irena in her own words (MP3 download: 3.15mb) from WAMC

The holidays are upon us. Santa is arriving in the nick of time so once again we can strengthen old links in the chain of memories and forge new ones. We all like to conjure up Currier and Ives, real or imagined remembrances of skating on the just frozen pond followed with hot chocolate, spiced cider or mulled wine.

‘Tis the season to be jolly. Songsters raise their voices with sounds of in Dulci Jubilo, Adeste Fidelis and Silent Night. Other merry makers are more likely to hum, All I Want for Christmas Are My Two Front Teeth or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

We all yearn for a nostalgic holiday in which we symbolically hold hands from one generation to the next.

Of course it is memories of childhood that determine whether the holiday feast includes Swedish gravlax or Norwegian baked cod, Mediterranean roast goat or stuffed whale skin (if you grew up in Greenland).

My own earliest memories of Christmas dinner recall England during the war years, when, in order to help our country, in some way that was never entirely clear to me, we were all supposed to raise chickens.We were the only family in the neighborhood who heeded this particular call to patriotism.

Our chickens were always escaping from the hen house and running into the neighbors’ gardens. It was my task to try to corner them, cower them into submission and carry them home, quivering in my arms. They needn’t have been afraid — we never ate any of them.

One chicken in particular became our family pet. Her name was Lucy. She was very tame. I used to wheel her around in my doll’s pram. She would lie there quietly, her head resting on the frilly pillow, one beady eye watching me. I covered her with a soft blanket to keep her feathers warm.

We always had roast goose, not chicken, for our Christmas dinner. My mother, a woman of tradition if ever there was one, followed the hallowed custom by English cooks from time immemorial.

No sooner was the goose committed to the oven than the Brussels sprouts were set to cooking. (In England, it is said, we have only three vegetables and two of them are Brussels sprouts.) How, now, I yearn for those lumpy mashed potatoes, greasy gravy and gooseberry relish…

Plum pudding is the symbol of an English Christmas. It represents the good and abundant earth. The attendant holly berries symbolize the blood of Christ, the flames of doused brandy are the flames of hell that are rapidly burned away as goodness triumphs over all. Or, at least that is what is supposed to happen.

Some families still make their own plum pudding, remembering to stir it clockwise, as the earth moves on its axis, for this will bring good luck and a wish may be granted. And even more good fortune will come to the diner, who finds in the pudding a coin of the realm or a ring or a silver charm. The notion is that a coin will bring a year of wealth, a ring forecasts a wedding in the future and a thimble predicts a happy life, though a solitary one as a spinster.

Queen Victoria was the monarch who introduced the idea of burying assorted trinkets in the pudding, (an early British version of the fortune cookie perhaps).

A new recipe for plum pudding was created to celebrate Queen’s Victoria’s 50th year on the throne. The recipe required:

• 50 sweet almonds, equal to the years of Her Majesty’s reign,
• 5 ounces of bread crumbs, representing Her daughters,
• 4 ounces of flour, numbering Her sons,
• 3 ounces of coconut, cut into 32 pieces, being the number of the Queen’s grandchildren,
• 2 ounces of sugar, being the number of Her great-grandchildren,
• 5 ounces of suet, chopped into as many pieces as Her Majesty has subjects in every town,
• 5 eggs, well beaten, representing England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and our Colonies—now, alas, our former Colonies.

All the ingredients were mixed together with ½ pint (4,980 drops) of milk representing the ages in months of Her Majesty and Her children. Boil 2 hours, 16 minutes or twice 86 minutes, the age of Her Majesty in her Golden Jubilee Year.

The current Queen’s Christmas pudding will be borne blue and blazing with brandy by Her Majesty’s principal page to the dining table at Windsor Castle. It will be made this year as is customary from a 17th century recipe. Ours will be bought online.

However you celebrate the holiday feast, may I wish you merry. As Charles Dickens’ Tiny Tim exclaimed, “God bless us every one”—especially those who are watching over the stock market!

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A White Christmas White House by Chef Thaddeus DuBois

Chef Thaddeus Dubois, despite his French name, grew up in Idaho and landed the job of pastry chef at the White House under the Bush Administration.  He says, “I think pastry is more important than hot food. It’s the final word of any meal.  DuBois was one of three finalists for the estimated $80,000-$100,000 a year job.

According to the New York Times, he had five interviews and prepared desserts for two small dinners for President George W. Bush, a former owner of the baseball team, the Texas Rangers. ‘W.’ was seduced with Chef Dubois’s individual popcorn parfaits made in white and red chocolate boxes, filled with layers of chocolate mousse, caramel mousse, peanuts, chocolate cake and caramel popcorn.  The showpiece that accompanied the parfaits was a baseball player made of spun sugar. It was a home run.

Dubois’ appointment qualified him to join the Club des Chefs des Chefs, an organization for chefs who cook or bake for heads of state–before he moved on to more fast paced surroundings at the Borgata hotel in Las Vegas.

The beloved Jacques Pepin worked as a chef for three French Presidents including Charles de Gaulle, but turned down the job offer of becoming the chef of the Kennedy White House. Instead he accepted a position at Howard Johnson’s.

When French-born René Verdon took the White House top chef position, he set the stage for Camelot.  Julia Child appeared on the small screen soon after. We all fell in love with Jack and Jackie, and Julia.  In the blink of that proverbial eye, we opened our eyes, our hearts and our bellies to the sophistication of French food.

Lately the bloom has been off the rose. W. ‘confessed,’ (if that is the appropriate word), “I have no food preferences, no drink preferences. A cheeseburger will be fine.”

Behind the scenes, a member of his White House kitchen staff revealed Dubya’s favorite foods are BLTs, grilled cheese, and peanut butter and honey sandwiches. These food choices may nevertheless constitute a gastronomical evolutionary step up from his father’s views on eating.

Many remember President George H.W. Bush’s declared abhorrence of broccoli, “I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. …I’m the President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.” When he later graphically exhibited his displeasure with the food at a banquet given in his honor in Japan, the video of President ’41′ throwing up into the lap of his host was instantly flashed around the world.

Prior to his election, President Nixon campaigned vigorously seemingly eager to sample every regional specialty. When alone in the Oval Office, with a dozen chefs standing to attention and eager to fulfill his every desire, he chose to eat cottage cheese with ketchup for lunch every day.

Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, was famous for his capacious appetites which included humungous quantities of barbecue and bourbon and branch (water).

I suspect Nancy Reagan hasn’t eaten a thing since she was eighteen.

I once was honored beyond imagination to have lunch in the company of President Jimmy Carter at his favorite Plains, Georgia cafeteria.  This is, (how to describe it?), a remarkably modest eatery.  Submerged in globules of grease on the steam tables were  long-ago expired, soggy chicken wings, forlorn collard (almost black), greens and weary, wilted lettuce with a dressing made from what tasted like strawberry-flavored shampoo. I seem to remember the bill for my meal came to $1.97.

There was a 10 percent discount if you handed the cashier a ticket proving you had attended church services the previous Sunday. The President had just such a ticket and handed it, with a cheerful smile, to the lady taking the money. I got the distinct impression that lunch was not the former president’s top priority.

I mention all these presidential food preferences because the Commander-in-Chief is in a position to influence the nation when it comes to ‘what’s for dinner?’ The more we revere our leader, the more likely we are to emulate him. This is fundamentally why it is so important we elect the right man for the job. His task is to select the right White House chef.  Many food folk have an opinion on this subject.

Dr. Tim Ryan is a master chef. He is also President of the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and one of only five Americans ever to receive the Presidential Medal from the World Association of Cooks Societies. He has nurtured several CIA alumni who have worked in the White House including Thaddeus Dubois and Walter Scheib.

President Ryan says, “Speculation about celebrity chefs is like engaging in fantasy football.”

He believes President Obama will seize the opportunity to make changes and has proposed John Doherty, another CIA grad, as a candidate for the position.  Doherty is the current executive chef at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel.

Tim Ryan goes on to suggest that President Obama could also shake things up with a rotating cast of big-name chefs for state dinners, much in the same way John F. Kennedy invited famed artists and performers to the White House. We all know chefs are great performers. When President Ryan speaks, the culinary world pays attention.  We hope President Obama is listening too. He probably is.

President-elect Barack Obama and his family are the real thing: super foodies with wide-ranging palates. “They are totally adventurous people … they enjoy food,” said Chef/Owner Rick Bayless of Topolobampo, an uptown restaurant in downtown Chicago that’s a favorite with the next first family.

One caution: Mr. Obama has an aversion to beets even Harvard beets.  We hope heads of state are noting this fact carefully.  The last thing we need is yet another international faux pas.

They say most of us yearn for the food of our childhood.  If this is so, spam could be among President Obama’s favorite foods as he spent much of his childhood in Hawaii.

The Associated Press reports: “For many Americans, Spam is a four-letter word for unwanted e-mail. In Hawaii, Spam is a beloved comfort food, with cans of the gelatinous pork bricks found in virtually every cupboard.”

Hoping to cash in on Hawaii’s love affair with the pinkish meat product, Burger King Corp. last month began offering Spam for breakfast — going head-to-head with rival McDonald’s Corp., which has been featuring Spam in the islands for years. Burger King is offering the Spam Platter — two slices of Spam nestled between white rice and scrambled eggs. The fast-food giant also offers the Croissanwich or Biscuit Sandwich with Spam.

My New Year’s wish for the nation is a White House filled with good food, great wine, the laughter of little girls (and boys) and their parents from around the world.  Bon Appétit to one and all!  Let the good times roll. And, let’s keep the change.

A January 8, 2009 Update to This Piece: the New York Times reported that President-Elect Obama and his family are taking the Bush’s recommendation and sticking with the current executive chef, Cristeta “Cris” Comerford. First Lady Laura Bush’s office has praised Ms. Comerford in the past for creating “original dishes with American flavor.”

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It was not until a few years later that I became a real U.S. citizen and was able to cast my vote for the first time.  I’ve voted in every election ever since, proud to perform my civic responsibility; each time believing everyone’s vote counts, that my vote counts.

I’ve never voted because of the inducement of a cup of coffee to do so, but when I saw this from Starbucks, I thought it the best reasoned advertisement I’ve ever seen.

Tomorrow (November 4th), I’m voting for my favorite candidate. And for Starbucks! Congratulations to both winners!

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